


Shatter

by Nadir (EffingEden)



Category: Vampire: The Masquerade
Genre: Aftermath of Torture, Chronicle: Seattle By Night (Elliquiy), F/M, FTM, FtM main character, Haunting, Mindfuck, Misgendering, Shibari, Toreador - Freeform, Torture, Transphobia, deadnames
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-09
Updated: 2018-02-09
Packaged: 2019-03-15 20:49:48
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,742
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13621410
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EffingEden/pseuds/Nadir
Summary: A downtime scene for my character Athari 'Gladstone' Gorth in the Seattle By Night vtm game on Elliquiy.Athari has just Embraced a beloved retainer, but is suffering from the effects of a Malkavian Haunting. In the hours after dawn, he remembers the first person he tried to Embrace, seventy years ago. [This piece is showcasing the effects of Dementation's Haunting, Dominate's Forgetful Mind and the VtM Rev.ed merit Iron Will]





	Shatter

Athari lay beside his doctor, arms loose around him and humming fragments of songs he had heard long ago into Roman’s hair, trailing his fingers up and down his spine and curling through locks that would forever be short. _Mine_ came the satisfied purr of his Beast. _Mine_ came the more human but no less monstrous savage that lived behind amber eyes. “Mine until the end of days,” he whispered softly out loud, and pressed a kiss to the neonate’s temple.

...why was he so cold? So still and limp - why wasn’t he breathing? Don’t be dead, don’t be dead, not you -

Fear spiked through him, a lurch of ugliness that marred the beauty of the moment, and his arms tightened around Roman in panic before rational thought caught up, slower than it should have been thanks to the sun pulling itself lazilly over the horizon. Yes, Roman was dead; yes, Athari had killed him. No, he was not gone. Just sleeping. They all had to do that, during the day.

He should be sleeping too, but dark thoughts had woken, and were stalking circles around him. Their maws were large and stuffed full with sharp teeth made of glass and memory. Their eyes wept under the fox masks they wore.

“Don’t haunt me tonight, Vada, please,” Athari whispered, begged. Sometimes speaking her name quietened her ghost, but not, it seemed, tonight.

Athari clutched Roman’s corpse to him as he remembered how it had been when he had first seen those eyes under the fox mask cry. Wet and overspilling, the tears that fell from under the porcelain mask chalky white from the make-up stolen down cheeks. It would stain silk if it touched it.

_Stop_ , Athari tried to say but all that came was a whine, a choked whimper. The scent of roses was so very strong and his throat hurt. There was the taste of sweet blood and bitter sap in his mouth. The soft caress of petals at his lips. The red-on-white of the blooms a blurred fuzz in the lower rim of his vision.

Pain. Prick, scratch, rip. On his tongue, down his throat. Dripped and tickled, the spurred stems catching soft flesh. He spasmed and coughed, the movement hurting him more than helping, tearing meat, more blood spattering the outer edges of the blooms thrust into his mouth. Sullying the flowers even more.

One for each obscenity he had screamed at the Bastard. So many, but at the same time nowhere near enough.

His body ached. Hurt in the most intimate and vile ways. It felt like the Bastard still had hands on him, touching what he had no right to, possessive and claiming and giving fresh pain to each inch touched-

_and there were hands on him_ , hands touched and hurt and he couldn’t bare it, he couldn’t take any more please, pleasepleasestop-

“Stop,” came a soft sob, a moth wing of a whisper. Weak and fragile. “Let me help you, you will hurt yourself more if you struggle.”

Athari hadn’t thought she could talk. The surprise of it stilled him. Her hands were careful and strong, but they trembled with effort to ease the knots, his blood soaking into the fibers had allowed them to tighten more than usual, then held them fast as they dried.

After some time struggling - maybe a moment, maybe an eternity, each tug on one section of rope jarring all the rest, tightening the constriction even more - she got up onto the distorted and ruined feet and tottered out of the room, then returned with a water jug. There were blades enough that she could have cut Athari free, but the cost of the Bastard’s ire was something only Athari dared bait. He wouldn’t fault the fox-ghoul for fearing it.

The fox-ghoul dripped water onto Athari’s bindings, then while she waited for the fibers to suck the fluid in her clever hands moved to the flowers in Athari’s mouth. One by one, they came free, clawing at his insides in resentment at being forced out.

Had he any strength or will left, he would have been sobbing wretchedly, but he could not. He lay there quite still for her, his tears red and her white, until the bouquet he had been given for tonight’s performance lay beside his heat, red spattered white. A gift for dancing and singing so well, and now he couldn’t move, couldn’t speak.

His lips were ripped and ruined, as was his throat, as was his... his... but he pulled in a breath and whispered, “Thank you,” to his master’s kitsune.

She stroked his hair from his face. “Don’t scream.” He pushed the air out of his lungs, not trusting himself with it, then nodded.

The ropes bit harshly, down to the very bone in places, but he didn’t make a sound.

* * *

 

  
His eyes were wet and his cheeks tacky with wept and wasted blood - and, ah. He’s gotten it in Roman’s hair. That had been a terrible night. There had been so many terrible nights. His sire had been cruel and violent, and Athari had loved him and loathed him with a passion. He had suffered and suffered for the man, for not being what the Bastard wanted him to be. For not shattering on his whim.

Athari knew now it was the challenge that had pushed the Bastard to turn him. How many others had there been before him, who had bent just as the fucker had wanted?

Ghouled and bound, broken and still allowed to live, Vada was everything he had tried to make Athari, and yet he had never embraced her.

He had discovered why one night. He had been out making money for the Bastard - and wouldn’t his old Madam laugh to know how he was being sold up and down the Strip, _you always go back to your roots_ she would crow - and had come back an hour before dawn. Cutting it close, but he didn’t want to see the fucker tonight.

A mistake. The Bastard had been in a mood, and had taken it out on the kitsune. She was black and blue, her silk rope ripped and baring strips of flesh ghostly pale and malnourished, shivering in a ball on the floor, hunched into herself, hands pressed to her face.

Gladstone stared for a long moment in the doorway of the haven, brows high and fear clear on his face. There was a scattering of white shards on the ground that looked, for that long instant, like teeth. Like he had knocked out her teeth - but there was very little blood, wouldn’t there be more if he had?

He moved into the haven, shut the door and walked to her, knelt close. She wasn’t sobbing, so deep into her own mind she had run. How long had she been his? How long would Gladstone have to be under the Bastard’s heavy hand before this was him?

He looked down, picked up the white fragment and realised it was her mask. The one he had never seen her without. “I am going to run you a bath, but I’ll be right back. Don’t worry, he won’t wake up. It’s just me here now.” He stood and went to the bathroom, and did as he had said, but detoured to his bedroom and took an ostentatious creation of ostrich feathers and silk from a box under his bed. A mask he’d had made for a dance he’d done a few months before, a lipstick smudge still on the right cheek from a fellow dancer. He brought it out and knelt again, holding it out in offering. “Until we can mend your fox face, will this do?”

Slowly, her head lifted, and he saw a glint of her eyes between her fingers. And then, even more slowly, she reached for it.

He didn’t react at the sight of her. He had expected something but... nothing like that. Not to that extent. She had no nose. It had been cut off her, her face left distressingly flat. He looked away, not wanting her to be hurt by his knowing.

She plucked the mask from him, but he didn’t look up until he was sure she was finished. “No bath,” came her whisper. “But help me... collect it?”

“Every piece,” he reassured her.

And they did, they found every fragment. The next night, Athari found someone who worked gold, and had him mend it. White porcelain veined with gold, kintsugi for the kitsune.

The bastard said nothing, note about the over dramatic feathers and not the old mask made new. But he watched Athari with a new focus. As if he had done something unexpected and strange.

* * *

 

  
Gladstone never knew who had done that to her. Had it been the Bastard? Or had it been someone else? Perhaps it had been, perhaps someone had known he wanted to take her as his own, and sought to ruin her. Make her imperfect enough for him to be unwilling to take her as a childe... but whole enough to keep in his shadow. A reminder of what could have been.

If someone had attacked Roman... Gladstone didn’t know what he would have done. But nothing could ruin a lover so much as to sour that love he felt. Beauty was not what caught his heart. It took far more effort than just being born lucky.

He struggled then to fight against the pain, the agony of memory and remember the good times, the fragments of joy they had forged together. A union of prisoners captured and kept in a hostile cage. Athari at least was allowed out as Gladstone. The Bastard was too out of touch or too self centered to see the trick, the over acting of a man pantomiming a woman for the audience’s amusement.

Vada saw it. Perhaps even anticipated it, as actors in her country were always men and play-acted women. The kitsune had seen Athari’s flesh exposed, but when he told her his name, and told her what he knew himself to be, she had nodded slowly. She spoke words that curled around his heart and sank in, warm and soothing. “Flesh is only flesh, and we must forgive its flaws. It does not speak the truth of your mind.”

They spoke almost every morning, though they rarely touched. He touched them too much for that. The lack of contact was respect. It was lovemaking, it was art. A slow tangling of fingers, light caresses that left no mark and did not take any more than was offered. She wrote him a poem, her skill with a pen beautiful beyond words both in the forming of prose and the penmanship. And over days and weeks and months, they fell in love. It was sin, taboo, a terrible risk. He wished he’d never done it. He wished he had treated her as badly as the Bastard had, so that maybe she wouldn’t have...

**“Athari, don’t bend for him!”**

It was so sudden, so loud, so real Athari was suddenly sat upright, looking around his bedroom desperately, looking for the source. Looking for her. Vada. But no, of course she wasn’t there.

There was only her ghost, and even that wasn’t real. A memory, a broken heart missing its shattered fragments. No gold could piece that together again. He forced himself to lie back down, determined not to disturb Roman’s first day’s rest. He’d had a long night. He’d died, frenzied... and tomorrow would be even longer. Let him rest, even if Athari could not.

He stroked Roman’s hair gently and nuzzled into him, breathed in his scent and clutched him tight in a desperate attempt to ward off what he knew was looming. Of course it was coming, the rest had been foreplay.

He didn’t want this. He did not want it but nothing could stall it for long, not even the ward of his new childe was protection enough. He knew well enough that love was thinner as paper as protection.

He learned it that night, so long ago. So long, and yet so recently it stung fresh and new. Vada was playing an instrument, a long Gaohu as the Bastard instructed a sullen Athari in the art of calligraphy. Athari was not against all the man’s lessons, and this one was not as vile as some he had to teach, so was willing to submit to learning. Dull as it was.

It was about perfecting pressure, self control and focus. It didn’t help that Gladstone didn’t know the language he was being taught in, but it was a insignificant matter. What he was writing was not the point as much as the _how_. Again and again he copied the symbols the Bastard had wrote, long dreary hours but if boredom that was all he was suffering, that was fine. More than fine.

And then a crack, unexpected and sudden, a cry of alarm, Athari’s hand jerked, ink spilled unnoticed. He looked at Vada, and the fox-masked ghoul was holding the slender neck of the instrument, snapped at the juncture where it joint the wider body, which was now dangling off its strings alone.

Broken.

Athari didn’t know the instrument’s importance, but he saw the wide-eyed terror behind the mask. And the absolute stillness in his sire.

There was perhaps three seconds Gladstone had to act before the Bastard was chosen a punishment worthy of the accident. Three seconds was not enough - so he did the first thing he thought of. And it was _the stupidest_ thing he could have done.

He threw himself at the Bastard.

He wasn’t strong, he wasn’t fast, he wasn’t anything but absolutely determined to get his attention, and oh. Oh how it worked. He’d fought with the Bastard before, but there had always been iron control in his sire that Athari couldn’t help but envy, a control over each move. What came from the man then was unbridled wrath.

Between one second and the next, bones broke. Organs ruptured. He didn’t know which way was up or down, the world flashed black then red then white - and then all was still, all was pain. He saw the Bastard’s face, so very close to his. He felt. Felt. Something too much in his chest. Thick and ringed by a dozen points of brighter pain. He looked down, and. Couldn’t understand what he saw. An arm. But where... where was the rest?

His legs crumpled before he worked out what he was seeing, and his sire followed him, or led him down, he couldn’t tell. Something in him hurt. Everything in him hurt.

“Stupid,” his sire hissed with absolute disgust as Athari dropped. He planted his heel firmly on Athari’s shoulder and pulled, and it took effort. And all the while it felt like something desperately vital was being drawn free - but no, no, it was just. Just the Bastard’s hand. That he had punched right into his chest. Athari hadn’t even seen him move. He’d just done it, like it was easy. Like it was nothing.

The Bastard finally freed himself, and Athari saw scratches on his hand, where shattered bone had clawed at him. He would have laughed, but he couldn’t pull air in, couldn’t do anything but twitch at his sire’s feet. His sire stared at him was a twist on his mouth Athari knew was dangerous, but he couldn’t do anything about it. Ugly that snarl said.

Athari realised he wasn’t going to live through this.

His fingers curled to claws against the polished wood under him, but he couldn’t move. His sire turned and stalked towards Vada, he heard her cry out again, then he returned to Gladstone’s field of view, grasping the broken instrument and looked at the splintered neck of it. “This was a gift from my sire. Poetic that it is now my gift to you.”

He turned it in his hand and drove it into Athari’s heart.

It didn’t kill him, but it hurt, it hurt and he couldn’t move. The bastard left his field of view again, and there was a slam of the door as he left.

Vada didn’t come to him. He didn’t even hear her move, perhaps she couldn’t. Perhaps she had retreated into her own head. Maybe she thought he was dead. Or had she fainted? Please be all right...

Time passed. Slowly, agonizingly. Time. Passed. And then there was a sound at the door. The Bastard and... a slight woman with shards of ice and sea glass for eyes. “This is your troubled one? Oh she is a handful, isn’t she. Here I was thinking you were being dramatic.” She moved to stand over Athari, her auburn hair twisted up off her neck. She looked familiar - the few times the Bastard had taken him to Elysium, she had always greeted his sire.

“She is capable of learning, but... her spirit is too feral. I did not want it to come to this, a pity but I would not kill my childe after I fought so hard to get the right.”

What were they going to do?

“This is no small task you ask. And the boon will reflect that, I trust.” There was a slight gaelic twist to the woman’s voice, but Athari couldn’t tell if it was scottish or irish, or even welsh or cornish, but there was a terrible glee in her eyes and Athari would have cowered.

“A major boon, should it take. A minor if not, in respect of the Ventrue primogen.”

Painted lips twisted slightly but she lifted her chin ever so delicately. “This is why I like you so much. Perhaps we can see about displacing Fjord. Really, a viking for Toreador primogen, that joke was old before he was embraced...”

She nudged the stem of the instrument in Athari’s chest with a toe, one brow curving. “No need to pull it out, you stuck her with her eyes nice and wide. Goodbye, little minx. I am going to turn you into a clawless little kitten.” And her blue eyes burned, becoming everything and all as everything was pried out of his head piece by piece.

She tried to gasp as the wood was pulled out of her chest, but her lungs wouldn’t pull the air in. And oh, oh how she hurt. She curled into herself her hands hovering over the terrible wound, her eyes wide and frightened as she looked for her love, her sire, her master. Then he was beside her, his hand at her chin, tipping her head towards the light. She moved for him, though she was disoriented and lost, at least he was her North star. She just needed to follow him and all would be well.

“You did it,” he breathed, amazement in his time. She felt a flutter of glee that she had pleased him - followed swiftly by jealousy as he turned to speak with someone else. “You fixed her!”

The woman was watching her with cool blue-green eyes. “Too soon to tell, but your enthusiasm is appreciated.”

“No, no - this? This isn’t a trick. She does not look upon me with this... innocence. I have seen her in a lie, she’s incapable of such skill. No, you have performed a miracle. She will obey?”

“Every single thing. Why didn’t you just bind her? Save yourself a boon?”

Her sire huffed. “I _did_.”

The stranger laughed. “My god, what a Ventrue she would have been. Maybe in another life. Ah, delightful as this was, I really must go, there is so little night in the summer. I’ll see you at Elysium.”

“Thank you, Moira, and good night.” There was a click-clack of heels and the door shut once more. Leaving her and her master alone. “Here,” he murmured, lifting his wrist to her mouth. “Drink and heal.” She did so, dipping her head and biting down to drink his rich and beautiful vitae. “What do you remember?”

She sucked at him and burned blood to heal her body enough to let her draw air before lifting her head from him, to meet his gaze. “Remember... from today? An accident. I fell.” Clumsy, she had to do better, she had to make her master proud.

“And before that, your human life?”

“Boring!” she answered instantly with a bright laugh. “How could it be anything else when you were not in it?” There was insistence on her sire’s face and she bit her lip, striving to do better. “It was cold and lonely and. Horrible, simply horrible. The best thing that ever happened was you.”

“No,” a whisper. Ragged, filled with horror. She hadn’t thought there was anyone else here, but there on the far side of the room was a strange thing, a pointed white-and-gold face. A mask. A red kimono and an aggressive stance. It was almost frightening, but the figure looked so frail. Ephemeral, even. “Athari, _no_.”

“Sit down and be silent,” her sire hissed, but the figure did not obey. Instead they - she? Moved closer, teetering on tiny feet towards them.

“You are not this. You are not meek, you are not afraid, you are not his. Do not bend for him, Athari!”

Her master snapped something harsh in his language, but the masked girl did not reply. She came close and closer, lifted her hands to her mask and pulled it away. She gasped in horror at the sight, the holes here her nose should be - then screamed weakly as the mask was shattered on the floor. “You are more than this, you are so much more. Please don’t forget me, Athari, please, I love you.”

“You dare try to undo this? This, that you forced me to? Both of you together? I see now I cannot have the pair of you so I must choose one over the other. █████████, stand up. Go to her and kill her. I have no use for her.”

Her stomach twisted over, a barb caught and snagged. The name from his lips - her name spoken out loud, why did it feel so wrong? Paired with that order, she balked at it. “I don’t want to,” she whispered, looking up at her master, her maker, her everything and hoping he would think again.

But his eyes hardened as they tuned down. “Die in her place then,” he hissed, his lip curling away from his teeth and he was going to eat her.

She squirmed away from him but he advanced, and it was clear he wasn’t exaggerating. He meant to destroy her. “I’ll do it, please, please don’t hurt me,” she babbled, desperate to get the man back to what he had been moments before, happy and proud. She got to her feet and looked at the poor creature who had to die. She was crying, and had been for a long time, the thick white of her makeup tear tracked. A fierce ache in her chest that had nothing to do with shattered bones made her own eyes fill with tears, and she didn’t know why. She didn’t know this sad ruin of a person, and that name they used for her, Athari, it wasn’t hers.

but it felt like it

”I am so sorry,” she sobbed. “I wouldn’t do it, but I don’t want to die.” It was weak reasoning, it was flawed and imperfect and she hated the words as they came out of her mouth. She hated herself, and she hated him but she didn’t have anything to back it up with. Everything in her head had an odd sort of flatness to it - but without a point of reference she couldn’t work out what was right or wrong, there was just pleasing her sire and how vile and wretched she felt doing it.

“I love you,” the painted woman wept. “Don’t forget me. Don’t forget me.”

She looked at her sire who watched them both closely, then to the poor creature again. “It won’t hurt, I promise.”

“It does,” came the reply, her whispery words laced with a bitter sadness. An exhausted surrender. “It hurts for eternity.”

It didn’t make any sense to her, but she didn’t ask. She could tell her sire was impatient. She closed the distance but hesitated at the last - worried, suddenly, that her blood would ruin the woman’s silk. As if that mattered. But the ghoul closed the last inch, arms coming around in a gentle hug that surprised her. “This is not who you are,” was her last whisper before █████████ lowered her head and drank.

She didn’t fight. She made no sound of pleasure either. She just grew cooler and heavier in her arms, until - until.

█████████ lifted her head from the dead woman’s neck and gently put her down. She was shivering, her face wet with tears. Her head was buzzing with confusion and questions she dared not ask out loud. What was her name, why had she been convinced they knew each other, why, why did she feel this mantle of misery coming over her - and. If she didn’t know her - because she didn’t remember the ghoul at all - then... why had she been in her sire’s haven? And why hadn’t he been surprised to see her?

There was lies all around her. What points of reference did she had? The girl, this poor woman who had let █████████ kill her rather than... rather than what? And what had her sire meant when the woman had first started talking, _try to undo this, forced him to do, both of them_?

So they had known each other, but why. Why couldn’t she remember?

He was speaking to her, but she wasn’t listening. She was looking at the dead girl’s face, fixed on it as she pulled at the web around her, grasping a thread of silk and pulling at it, hoping it would not snap.

Athari. Athari. That name. It wasn’t hers, but why did it feel... why did it feel like it? Why did it make her feel strength and safety rather than... anger, disgust, loathing like the name he used for her?

She pushed for answers she knew must be somewhere in her head. She pushed, and struggled and reached -

-and _remembered_.

The world lurched as true memory clashed and battered down the false memories, and it was like a theatre set had been torn away to reveal something much worse and much more real and it was overwhelming and - and.

And he was holding Ji Vada’s body in his arms. Cold and limp and stil. “Don’t be dead, Vada, please, don’t be dead-” desperately, he ripped his own wrist on his teeth and tried to feed her to bring her back to him, selfishly wanting to take back what he had done, desperate to not be alone with the Bastard.

“NO!” The Bastard roared in rage as he realised the memories had been ripped to shreds, and he pulled Athari away from Vada to deny him even that shred of hope.

* * *

  
Gladstone pulled himself from the memories with a hiss and a shake of his head. What had happened after that was of no consequence, it had hurt and he had lived through it. But Vada was gone, and it had been he who had killed her. Just because his sire had threatened his own life.

_Weak_.

It made sense why Ji Vada’s memory was prowling in his head tonight, but it had not come on him so strong for years. It truly was like he was being haunted.

...Haunted.

The Malkavians had a trick for that, didn’t they? Another disgusting mindfuck. He would have dismissed the idea but he recalled all too clearly seeing it happen at the concert. And Miguel had been furious at four little words. He did have a short fuse... he remembered Noelle’s friend had been there too, the way she had stared at him, but she had been snarky rather than enraged. No, it had been Miguel who had done it he was certain. And oh, what trouble he would be in.

He curled protectively around Roman, and whispered to his sleeping childe, to the memory of his Vada, “I love you.” It wasn’t enough to quiet his head because it was the very thing that had killed them both, but it was the only balm he had to offer. 


End file.
